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How to Make a Character Page
This is a guide to making wiki articles for your PPC character(s). For general editing help, please see . So, you want to make a character page. That's awesome! We're glad you want to contribute to the general milieu. First, though, we'd like to ask that certain criteria are fulfilled: # Get Official Permission. If you don't have Permission to write a PPC spin-off, what do you need with PPC characters? # Write something with your character in it. If your character hasn't done anything yet, it's not really likely that anyone else will need to look them up. # Add your character to the Glossary of PPC Characters, following the format detailed there. If you've done all that, then it's probably cool to make a page for your character. There aren't many hard and fast rules about this, but there is some variation depending on the type of character, so we've divided the tutorial into sections for agent pages, staff pages, and other types of character pages. Since most PPC characters are agents, we'll start with that. Agent Pages Agents are here defined as PPC characters who go on missions. Barring a few exceptions, such as Intelligence agents and Security agents, they are members of Action Departments. # Open up a . # Decide what to call your page, which should be pretty easy, since it's your agent's name. If you don't know their name . . . uh . . . we don't think this tutorial can help you. Anyway, the name of the page should be the agent's full name, whether it's one word, two, three, or whatever, though if it gets TOO long you might just want to go with first and last, for simplicity. It should not contain the word "agent" (except for Agent Justin Agent, but he already has a page anyway). # Grab the PPC Agents infobox template and paste it into your page. Fill it out. If you can't fill something in right away, that's okay, just leave it alone. # Under the infobox, type a sentence or two in the lead section giving some basic information about your agent, usually something like this: #: Alice is an agent in the Department of Mary Sues. She is written by Bob. # Under a header called "Agent Profile", start your agent's profile. This usually includes sections under sub-headers for "Appearance" and "Personality". If your agent's history and/or PPC career don't warrant a whole section, that can go under a sub-header here, too. # If your agent has a lot of backstory and PPC history, start a new section header called "Agent History". You may wish to use sub-headers for "Recruitment" and "PPC Career". ## At some point, you may also wish to add a sub-header called "Timeline" to keep track of what all your agent gets up to outside of missions. # Under a new header called "Mission Logs" or "Mission Reports" (as you like), start a section for the stories in your spin-off. ## Give a link to your spin-off's hub or index, like so: ##: Home: Alice and Bob ## Under a sub-header called "Partnered with Bob" (or whatever your agent's partner's name is), provide a bulleted list of the agent's missions, including a link to the mission and the continuum or continua in which it takes place. Entries should look something like this: ##* "Mary Sue Goes to Rivendell" (Lord of the Rings) ##** Summary, blurb, or additional information goes here. # Don't forget to place your article in the proper categories, usually "PPC Agents" and their department (and division, if applicable), but sometimes also "Badfic Character", "Reformed Sue", etc. If your agent goes insane or dies, there are categories for those, too. Note that not all pages have to be done exactly the same way; if you browse around a bit, you'll find lots of variations. However, whatever you do, you must include a credit to the writer and the Mission Reports section. Unless you don't actually want people to read your missions, of course, but in that case, why did you write them? Staff Pages PPC staff are here defined as PPC characters who don't go on missions, but rather have jobs around Headquarters. Without exception, they are members of Infrastructure Departments. Creating staff pages is basically the same as creating agent pages, but with a few differences, as you'll see. # Open up a . # Decide what to call your page. Again, this is the character's full name, unless it's ridiculously long, and does not contain their title (if any). # Grab the PPC Staff infobox template and paste it into your page. Fill it out. If you can't fill something in right away, that's okay, just leave it alone. # Under the infobox, type a sentence or two in the lead section giving some basic information about your character, usually something like this: #: Joe is a nurse in the Department of Fictional Psychology. He is written by Bob. # Under a header called "Character Profile", start your character's profile. This usually includes sections under sub-headers for "Appearance" and "Personality". If your character's history and/or PPC career don't warrant a whole section, that can go under a sub-header here, too. # If your agent has a lot of backstory and PPC history, start a new section header called "Character History". You may wish to use sub-headers for "Recruitment" and "PPC Career". # Under a new header called "Appearances", start a section for the stories in which your character appears. ## If your character has a spin-off to themselves, give a link to its hub site (see format above). ## Provide a bulleted list of the stories in which your character appears. These generally won't include continuum tags, since staff spend most of their time in HQ. If they appear in someone else's mission, though, use the following format. (Note that "Alice" and "Bob" should be links to the agents' pages; they aren't linked here because one is actually a horse and the other would be a redlink.) ##* "Mary Sue Goes to Rivendell" (Lord of the Rings), Agents Alice and Bob (DMS) ##** Summary/blurb says why Joe shows up in the story. # Again, don't forget to add categories, this time "PPC Staff" and their department (and division, if applicable), plus whatever other status applies. Again, not all pages need be identical, but must include links and credit to the writer. Other Character Pages There are several other types of PPC character, including children in the nursery and other civilians, and slain Sues. While the latter aren't really PPC characters, strictly speaking, there is a format to follow if you're going to make pages about them, so we're talking about them anyway. Children # Open up a . # Decide what to call your page. Again, this is the character's full name, unless it's ridiculously long. Children rescued from badfics tend to be renamed, often taking the surname of either their adopter(s) or the author of their home continuum. # Grab the Nursery Child infobox template and paste it into your page. Fill it out. If you can't fill something in right away, that's okay, just leave it alone. # Under the infobox, type a sentence or two in the lead section giving the character's name in bold and his or her writer, and then a couple of paragraphs about what they look like, where they come from, and whatever else there is to know about them. # Under a header called "Appearances", give bulleted links to the stories in which they appear, including the mission in which they were rescued if applicable. See mission format in "Staff Pages" above. # Add the category "Civilians in HQ". Also add "Badfic Characters" if they were rescued. Other Civilians There aren't too many characters around the PPC who don't have jobs to do, but if you've got them, see above, but leave out the infobox. Slain Sues and Stus Pages should only be made for extraordinary Sues and Stus, ones that stand out from the crowd and are particularly unique in some way. Should you encounter a Sue or Stu like this, and you find that other people are still talking about it months after the mission report was released, you may wish to nominate it for a page on the wiki. If successful, this template should be used for its page. # Open up a . # Decide what to call your page. In this case, it should be the full name no matter how ridiculously long it is. #* You may find that your Sue or Stu shares a name with another one, or even with a canon character. In that case, usually just appending "(Sue)" to the page name, complete with parentheses, will take care of it, but if there are multiples, then add "(Continuum Sue)". Examples include Link (Sue) and Alex (Tolkienverse Sue). # Grab the Mary Sue infobox template and paste it into your page. Fill it out. If you can't fill something in right away, that's okay, just leave it alone. # Under the infobox, type a sentence or two in the lead section giving the character's name in bold and his or her continuum of origin, usually something like this: #:Aerith was a Mary Sue in the Lord of the Rings continuum. She was killed by Agents Alice and Bob. # Explain how she ruined the continuum under a header called "Character History". # Give the reading of her offenses under a header called "Charges". # Tell us how the agents cleverly disposed of her under a header called "Character Death". # Finally, give us the links to her fic of origin (if possible) and the mission in which she was killed under a header called "Links". # Add the category "Slain Mary Sues". Also add "Continuum Sues" if the category exists. For this one, stick to the format. Character Images a la Gaia.]] If at all possible, you should add an image of your character, both because it makes the page look better and because, well, we want to see what they look like. If you aren't an artist yourself, there are alternatives. The most recommended are: * Gaia Online's Avatar Builder - Shows the full body and offers a ton of selection. You need an account with Gaia to use it yourself, but if you don't want to make an account, Neshomeh is willing to build an avatar for you on request. Just ask! * Rinmaru Games' Mega Anime Avatar Creator - Only gives a portrait view and the selection is limited, but they look nice. The site also offers many other avatar creators and dress-up games, though there's a large bias toward female characters. If neither of those takes your fancy, there are lots of other free avatar builders out there that you could use, such as HeroMachine or eLouai's Candybar dollmaker. We only ask that you do not use something like FoxRichards' FaceMaker for your agent's main image, since it only shows a severely close-cropped image of the face and doesn't really give a good idea of their general style—or even their full hairdo. If you want to use one for a secondary image, though, that's fine. Wrapping Up Once you've gone through the steps to create your page, make sure to hit the "Preview" button before publishing. Check to see that everything is displaying like it ought to. Then click "Publish." If you weren't paying attention above, add your character to the Glossary of PPC Characters. Also make sure to add links to them from any other relevant pages, such as their continuum of origin and the List of RCs. That's it, you're done! Category:Help